Crazy weekend in the Bundesliga with Bremen winning 5-2 at Bayern. And they were five up before ex-Bremen man Borowski got two late goals for Bayern - highlights in TFKTube by the way.
And against all the odds Hoffenheim have won again. They’re a tiny club and picked up some decent lower league players in recent leagues (and a very decent coach) to get through the divisions - like Gretna with a good manager. Before the start of the season their chairman promised that they’ll match Bayern for spending next summer if they stay up. Well they walloped Dortmund at the weekend and moved into second place.
Schalke are top and are followed by Hoffenheim, Hamburg and Stuttgart with Bayern another two points and a couple of places further back.
Got back into my bundesliga betting buzz recently and it’s a cracking old league.
Leverkusen coming into a bit of form with a good little run of results and Hertha and Hamburg are both doing well with Bayern lurking. The big story is still Hoffenheim though. They are ridiculously good going forward and they’re scoring at will. They came from behing to win 3-1 at Bochum tonight - Bochum were a difficult team to beat at the Ruhrstadion last season, not quite as impressive this year but they still take beating.
rock why do you consider it the most enjoyable league? there seems to be great atmosphere inside the german grounds all right and plenty of attacking football but isn’t that about it? do teams try and play good football in general? also do setanta have a live match once a week at a set time? have a 26 euro free bet with boyle’s this week so might follow any accumulator you go with (stake is non-refundable).
Good attacking football played larry but it’s the atmosphere that swings it for me. Like football used to be in Scotland and England with terraces and plenty of noise.
There’s some very good teams and players there. They’re not always successful at European level for some reason but if you look at the German national side they always have a class side and they all come from the Bundesliga.
The live game on Setanta is on Friday nights - there are fairly extensive highlights programmes that show all the goals and good chances without having any analysis which means you get to see a better portion of the games.
Hoffenheim are still top of the Bundesliga and they travel to second place Bayern Munich on Friday night with a 3 point lead. They’re an incredible story - Rocko had mentioned them being a small club before but I hadn’t realised they were in the equivalent of Division 5 in 2000. Rocko, are they owned by one rich benefactor or do they have a company bankrolling them or what? I see they’ve a few South American and African players in their squad to complement a German and Austrian core of players. They’ve also scored 40 goals in 15 league games and have thumped a load of teams. Incredible stuff.
They come in for a fair bit of criticism in Germany for breaking the normal model but I think it’s well harsh. There are clubs like Koln and Frankfurt and Moenchengladbach and Schalke with massive fan bases who never win anything anymore but the likes of Schalke have had serious Russian investment in the last 5 years or so. TSG Hoffenheim have spent far less.
Hoffenheim may be a small club but they’re not a new club. They didn’t spend ridiculous cash in the summer (though they’ve said they’ll match Bayern next year). They bought a few unproven lads and a few lads who failed elsewhere and they got themselves a cracking manager in Rangick - he’s a controversial guy in Germany because he was the first manager to go for 4 at the back (way after the rest of Europe had done it). He had decent success but was sort of ridiculed and now he’s back and doing superbly.
They have a crazy amlunt of goals in their matches.
Didn’t go to that many when I was a student there. It was ridiculously cheap but I hadn’t enough money to eat much of the time so didn’t go that often. Local team had been relegated to the regional leagues and have a right-wing element and next nearest team were Schalke who have their right-wing too.
But within no distance at all there was Bochum, Dortmund, Dusseldorf (2. Liga) and not far at all from Koln and Moenchengladbach etc.
Biggest disappointments were:
going to a Bochum game and seeing a union jack there with Bochum Loyal scrawled on it.
going to Leverkusen to see them lose at home to the huns in the UEFA Cup and seeing the Germans applauding the hun fans oblivious to the fact that they’d be singing about bombing their houses all game.